Anne Soulard, Charles Franks, Robert Fite, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY BY HUTTON WEBSTER, PH.D. "There is no part of history so generally useful as that which relates to the progress of the human mind, the gradual improvement of reason, the successive advances of science, the vicissitudes of learning and ignorance, which are the light and darkness of thinking beings, the extinction and resuscitation of arts, and the revolutions of the intellectual world." --SAMUEL JOHNSON, _Rasselas_. PREFACE This book aims to furnish a concise and connected account of human progress during ancient, medieval, and early modern times. It should meet the requirements of those high schools and preparatory schools where ancient history, as a separate discipline, is being supplanted by a more extended course introductory to the study of recent times and contemporary problems. Such a course was first outlined by the Regents of the University of the State of New York in their _Syllabus for Secondary Schools_, issued in 1910. Since the appearance of the Regents' _Syllabus_ the Committee of Five of the American Historical Association has made its _Report_ (1911), suggesting a rearrangement of the curriculum which would permit a year's work in English and Continental history. Still more recently the Committee on Social Studies of the Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, in its _Report_ (1916) to the National Education Association has definitely recommended the division of European history into two parts, of which the first should include ancient and Oriental civilization, English and Continental history to approximately the end of the seventeenth century, and the period of American exploration. The first twelve chapters of the present work are based upon the author's _Ancient History_, published four years ago. In spite of many omissions, it has been possible to follow without essential modification the plan of the earlier volume. A number of new maps and illustrations have been added to these chapters. The selection of collateral reading, always a difficult problem in the secondary school, is doubly difficult when so much ground must be covered in a single course. The author ventures, therefore, to call attention to his _Readings in Ancient History_. Its purpose, in the words of the preface, is "to provide immature pupils with a variety of extended, unified, and interesting extracts on matters which a textbook treats with necessary, though none the less deplorable, condensation." A companion volume, entitled _Readings in Medieval and Modern History_, will be published shortly. References to both books are inserted in footnotes.